Kabosu: Viral dog who became face of Dogecoin dies at 18

Kabosu, a Japanese Shiba Inu dog, whose photo inspired several online memes and became the face of Dogecoin cryptocurrency has died.

“She quietly passed away as if asleep while I caressed her,” her owner Atsuko Sato wrote on her blog on Friday.

“I think Kabo-chan was the happiest dog in the world. And I was the happiest owner,” she added.

Kabosu was a rescue dog and her real birthday was not known, however, Sato suggested that she was aged 18 at the time of her death.

Atsuko Sato said that Kabosu fell ill with leukaemia and liver disease in late 2022.

“In the last few years I’ve been able to connect the online version of Kabosu, all these unexpected things seen from a distance, with our real lives,” she added.

The internet-beloved dog went viral in 2010 when her owner took a picture of her crossing her paws on the sofa.

The image captured Kabosu giving the camera a beguiling look and soon became a meme that spread from colleges to office email chains.

The viral picture of Kabosu later became an NFT digital artwork that sold for $4 million.

However, it was Dogecoin that contributed highly to the dog’s fame.

The cryptocurrency , started as a joke by two software engineers, is now the eighth-most valuable cryptocurrency with a market capitalisation of $23 billion.

The value of Dogecoin jumped after Tesla owner Elon Musk joked about the currency on X and hailing it as “the people’s crypto”.

Meanwhile, hip-hop star Snoop Dogg, Shark Tank entrepreneur Mark Cuban and the Kiss bassist Gene Simmons are among the backers of Dogecoin.